Migration to our cities

A family of rural migrants at the Hyderabad railway station. - A. ROY CHOWDHURY

Identifying avenues of employment and providing support services to rural people is the best way to reduce the problem of migration to cities.

NOT very long ago Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a massive mission to develop and renew the urban areas of the country. A sum of Rs.100,000 crores will be raised over the next few years for this purpose. This is most welcome news. For years, cities and towns have received little or no developmental funding from the Central government, at least not to any significant or recognisable extent. And what little was provided went to big metropolitan regions, not to the lesser cities and towns, which have had to make do with what little they could raise, or receive from State governments.

The result of all this is there for all to see. Our metropolitan regions - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore - are urban nightmares. Almost all of them have problems with water, power, sanitation and sewage, traffic, medical services, and above all with law and order. It is not just a failure of planning and development at the local level; it is a failure right at the top, a failure to look ahead, to study trends in the growth of the population of these metropolitan regions and the activity in them. It is truly a sad commentary on this country - which so many refer to as an emerging economic power - that its major metropolitan areas are urban disasters. Of late, the appalling nature of the traffic in Bangalore has become major national news; the never-ending power crisis in the capital, Delhi, must surely make us the laughing stock of Asia, let alone the rest of the world, and the recent rain in Mumbai and Chennai, fierce and heavy though it was, showed up the true condition of the drainage system of the two cities.

This is the state of our metropolitan areas. But they are modern and very much better off than the other cities and towns. All the problems of the metros are present there, except that they are far worse. Many cities have not hours, but days, of power cuts; the roads in some are no longer roads but rutted, pitted, muddy stretches of land strewn with stones and potholes. In many areas water has ceased to be available in household taps, and sewage disposal and garbage collection are ideas the residents have heard of but not seen for a long time.

This is why the announcement of the new mission for urban renewal is so welcome. So far, it is just that - an announcement; but one hopes that in the not-too-distant future we will be presented with a blueprint for action over a specific period of time, action that foresees what lies ahead in terms of the demand for services and provides for it adequately, and effectively.

One cannot emphasise enough the vital importance of planning the effort realistically. There is no scope for error here, because that will lead to simply gigantic sums of money being spent to correct them, because development in urban areas is very costly, given land values and the density of population and the configuration of cities and towns. Consider the terrible mistake made in the building of sewage treatment plants in Delhi as a part of the plan to clean the Yamuna river. Over Rs.60 crores has been spent, perhaps much more, and the plants are virtually idle because it has now been discovered that they are not connected to the sewage system, and some of them are not designed, apparently, for the kind of refuse that the city produces. The result is that the Yamuna continues to be a toxic, foul-smelling drain, and the sewage treatment plants have remained underutilised.

Yet, planning is not by any means the only issue; urban renewal and development means taking on some of the most powerful political people in the country, and those responsible for the development projects will have to be steadfast and dedicated if they are to overcome these interests. It will not only not be easy, it may at times look impossible. If, in Mumbai, it was possible for builders to build on the Mithi river, which drains the northern suburbs and also take over brazenly portions of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, one can see at once just how powerful the reach of these people is. What will happen to projects to widen roads, build drainage and sewage systems, stop open theft of power and water can only be imagined.

But let us assume that the Central government has a strong determination to ensure that this mission becomes a reality and projects are taken up in the face of all opposition. There remains a problem that is present in almost all the major cities, and, if the developmental projects begin to bear fruit, will spread to others and even to smaller cities where urban renewal becomes a reality. That is the problem of migration.

We have seen large numbers of the rural poor, and also the urban poor from smaller towns and cities, flocking to the metropolitan regions of Delhi, Mumbai and now Bangalore. One hears that large numbers are moving to Hyderabad as well and it is a matter of time before the wave of migration comes to Chennai. They come in search of work and a means of staying alive, and for this they are obliged by unscrupulous operators to live in horrifying conditions in slums where they have to pay for a tiny place in which to stay either with others or with their families, squeezed together. The slums are built on public land, usually; that is what the operators arrange and money is the factor that makes it all happen.

The key may lie in the other initiatives the government has announced to improve economic conditions in the rural areas. If these plans result in gainful employment in rural areas there will be no compulsion to come to the cities, nor will people who have lived in their villages for centuries want to. It is not impossible; there are a host of employment opportunities in the rural areas that need some initial support and will then become self-sustaining. We have seen this happen with the spread of floriculture outside Bangalore; that kind of development, of new occupations that are possible and profitable, can be initiated and sustained.

If it is not a part of any other mission, it must be a part of the urban development initiative. If the urban areas are to develop with any kind of order and effectiveness, then the influx of migrants must be reduced, and if they, have work where they are, then the urban areas will not be put under the intolerable strain that mass migration will mean. The problem is simple enough: the rural - and small town urban - poor do not want to live in the dreadful slums of big cities if they can earn a decent living where they are. It is really a question of identifying these avenues of employment and providing the support services they will initially need for some time.

The problem is not, it must be emphasised, that of one State or two; it is a national problem, and needs to be seen as such. Plans to reduce such migration must be national and implemented with vigour and with realism. If they work, then the mission to renew and develop the urban regions will also work. But, it needs a very clear vision and foresight. That must be the Prime Minister's first priority.